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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom Never Told You from how stupp

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 1: Kristin's I'm Caroline And for our second Polloween themed episode

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Speaker 1: of this year, we are going to, rather than talking

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Speaker 1: about the supernatural, talk about scary things in the real world,

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Speaker 1: which to me are much scarier. Well, yeah, because they

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Speaker 1: can actually jump out and get you exactly, Well, I

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Speaker 1: guess racist costumes could jump out and get you too,

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Speaker 1: but yes, but we're going to talk about women in

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Speaker 1: true crime and specifically why women are so drawn to

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Speaker 1: this genre. And this first caught my eye with a

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Speaker 1: Time magazine article in September about the meteoric rise of

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Speaker 1: Investigation Discovery, which full disclosure. Investigation Discovery is part of

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Speaker 1: the House stuff Works and Discovery Communications family of networks,

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Speaker 1: and it's all centered around true crime shows. Yeah. It's

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Speaker 1: taking what is sometimes like a late night you know,

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Speaker 1: TV watching binge, and it's putting it on twenty four

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Speaker 1: hours a day. And it actually launched back in two

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Speaker 1: thousand eight and two thousand nine. It earned the tagline

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Speaker 1: of Your Guilty Pleasure. Yeah, and that with that tagline alone,

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Speaker 1: you can see how the channel is already in two

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Speaker 1: thousand nine starting to queue into its more female audience,

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Speaker 1: and now it is the fastest growing network for women

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Speaker 1: and the eighth most popular cable channel among women to

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Speaker 1: fifty four. And don't worry, this is not going to

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Speaker 1: be a major advertorial all episode long for Investigation Discovery.

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Speaker 1: But that is huge and notable growth. Yeah, and I

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Speaker 1: mean even just recently it's it's really jumped up by

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Speaker 1: Investigation Discovery or i D showed at increase over the

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Speaker 1: eighteen to forty nine year old female viewer demographic, making

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Speaker 1: it number four in daytime delivery. So it's not anymore

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Speaker 1: just like creepy crime shows that you watch late at

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Speaker 1: night with who's the guy on Unsolved Mysteries that I

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Speaker 1: watched as a Robert Walt, No, that's the other one. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: I watched it as a child and it scared me

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Speaker 1: so much, but I couldn't stop watching it. I wasn't

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Speaker 1: allowed to watch those kinds of face was creepy and

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Speaker 1: the screen was creepy because there was like a fog

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Speaker 1: machine all the time. Yeah. So, but anyway, it's taking

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Speaker 1: that fear and just spanning it over a whole day.

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Speaker 1: Well in the daytime delivery. It's also significant because that's

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Speaker 1: why in the Time magazine headline it asked the question,

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Speaker 1: is true crime the new soap opera for women because

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Speaker 1: we're watching it and not just at night but also

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Speaker 1: during the day and for those of you who might

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Speaker 1: not be familiar with I D shows includes things like

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Speaker 1: On the Case with Polazon, Final Witness, Wives with Knives,

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Speaker 1: and then it kind of goes on from there. You

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Speaker 1: get the general gist of it. Yeah, a lot of

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Speaker 1: a lot of shows featuring women both in the criminal

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Speaker 1: component and as the victim, a lot of them having

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Speaker 1: to do with uh, well, I'll just say that the

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Speaker 1: stereotype of like shows about you know, women going crazy

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Speaker 1: and killing their husbands and stuff like that exists for

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Speaker 1: a reason. Yeah. But the question is, though, especially for

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Speaker 1: those shows that aren't so much about the woman as

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Speaker 1: the killer crazed to killer, but instead where the woman

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Speaker 1: is often the victim of a male perpetrator, why some

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Speaker 1: people wonder would we be so drawn to watching that

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Speaker 1: almost putting ourselves in the place of that woman who

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Speaker 1: might be, you know, in the case of being stalked

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Speaker 1: or in some horribly abusive relationship, or who's who that

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Speaker 1: being murdered, and some scholars and also TV execs suspect

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Speaker 1: that it has to do with the fact that with

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Speaker 1: a lot of these true crime shows, it's not just

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Speaker 1: a glamorization of violence that's going on, but the fact

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Speaker 1: that it brings it full circle a lot of times

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Speaker 1: to that perpetrator being arrested. Right, it's telling the full story.

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Speaker 1: You're getting that satisfying conclusion. And as Brad Bushman points

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Speaker 1: out he's a communications and psych professor at Ohio State University,

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Speaker 1: it focuses as much on the consequences as the violent

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Speaker 1: act itself. It's not just talking about how some some

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Speaker 1: poor victim is being killed or assaulted. It is also

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Speaker 1: focusing on actual justice. And he also talks about how

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Speaker 1: women are increasingly comfortable with the genre itself, citing an

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Speaker 1: uptick in quote unquote violent female role models in the

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Speaker 1: media and changing societal norms. He's saying that, you know,

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Speaker 1: it used to be socially unex sceptible for women to

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Speaker 1: engage in such behavior, both the committing violent crimes and

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Speaker 1: even being interested in violence. Yeah, and Jane Latman, who

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Speaker 1: is Investigation Discoveries head of Development, told Time Magazine that

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Speaker 1: She thinks that watching these shows offers a quote unquote

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Speaker 1: cathartic journey for the female viewer that actually makes us

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Speaker 1: feel safer in the end, because it brings you face

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Speaker 1: to face with those true crimes that happen, brings you

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Speaker 1: face to face with these perpetrators, and then we see

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Speaker 1: them arrested and brought to justice. And so she says

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Speaker 1: it helps people kind of feel like, Okay, I can

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Speaker 1: go to bed and I'm not going to check my

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Speaker 1: door ten times. And similarly, Sarah Cazozak, who's the head

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Speaker 1: of production for I D, says that women might also

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Speaker 1: like it because it makes them feel comforted that, by

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Speaker 1: compare sin to all these crazy plotlines going on, their

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Speaker 1: families have to be normal. Yeah. I mean, you know,

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Speaker 1: the worst my mother does is drunk Facebook message me

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Speaker 1: or like text me from the department store. And so

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Speaker 1: I get a string of like ten texts and everything's

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Speaker 1: misspelled and and and it's confusing. But she hasn't murdered anyone. There,

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Speaker 1: You good? Good? Because yeah, a lot of these yeah,

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Speaker 1: they do focus on family sagas, and so by comparison,

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Speaker 1: my family is pretty tame. But Henry Schlife, who became

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Speaker 1: i D s president back in two thousand nine, had

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Speaker 1: previously run Court TV, which has a similar bent, and

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Speaker 1: he said that what we learned there, and certainly what

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Speaker 1: you can see here, is that women really love not

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Speaker 1: just the crime and justice genre, but the storytelling and

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Speaker 1: puzzle solving all around it. It feels very neat and

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Speaker 1: tidy when you're watching one of those shows. I don't

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Speaker 1: watch them because I will get sucked in. Um. I

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Speaker 1: have a friend who like obsessively goes how and just

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Speaker 1: like turn on crime shows and watches them all night long.

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Speaker 1: I would not be able to sleep, probably, But yeah,

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Speaker 1: I I tend not to want to get sucked in.

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Speaker 1: But I do agree that they are tied up very nicely.

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Speaker 1: You feel a sense of order in the world when

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Speaker 1: you when you watch these narratives happen. Yeah, And even

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Speaker 1: though Investigation Discovery is a relatively new network, um and

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Speaker 1: we've had shows in the past, things like Unsolved Mystery

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Speaker 1: and Court TV in a different kind of way we

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Speaker 1: had We've had true crime on TV for a while,

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Speaker 1: but not in the two fourth seven kind of format

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Speaker 1: of I D. But of course this true crime genre

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Speaker 1: and its appeal to women has been around a lot

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Speaker 1: longer in the form of true crime books. Yeah. Just

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Speaker 1: like women are the biggest audience for romance novels, we

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Speaker 1: are also the largest buyers of mystery books and suspense thrillers.

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Speaker 1: And as Jean Merley points out in her book The

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Speaker 1: Rise of True Crime Time, this genre, especially in the

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Speaker 1: written form, has been around for a very long time,

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Speaker 1: and she says that what looks like voyeurism or thrill

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Speaker 1: seeking may actually mask the gut level human desire to

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Speaker 1: comprehend the irrational. Yeah, and if you are a fan

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Speaker 1: of true crime, I do want to plug Jean Merley's

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Speaker 1: book because it is fascinating to take a deeper look

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Speaker 1: into this appeal and how it coincides with violence and society.

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Speaker 1: Um So, she talks about how modern true crimes earliest

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Speaker 1: appearance is made in the detective magazine in the nineteen

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Speaker 1: forties and fifties. Although in the nineteenth century we had

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Speaker 1: depictions that distance the killer through the language of monstrosity,

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Speaker 1: we already have. You know, they're obviously like more violent

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Speaker 1: texts that are going on before the nineteen forties and fifties,

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Speaker 1: but the language of it evolves, right, It's the whole

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Speaker 1: scary person standing in the shadows, that whole distancing. It's

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Speaker 1: it's not your husband or your cousin who's coming and

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Speaker 1: assaulting you or hurting you and your family. It's some crazy,

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Speaker 1: psychopathic other. And then this develops, and in the early

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Speaker 1: twentieth century we have Edmund Pearson's whose popular murder narratives

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Speaker 1: used more of a self mocking, almost sarcastic tone to

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Speaker 1: his crime stories, which then gives way to the hard

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Speaker 1: boiled style of crime fiction, which found its way into

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Speaker 1: the narratives of the thirties and forties. And with the

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Speaker 1: hard boiled style, which is really distinct to American crime writing,

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Speaker 1: it brings those true crime aspects to the forefront. It

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Speaker 1: gets gritty, there's graphic sex and violence. You often have

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Speaker 1: sordid urban backgrounds and fast paced, slangy dialogue. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: then in the nineties sixties we start to see a

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Speaker 1: very interesting parallel two things going in opposite directions. Crime

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Speaker 1: narratives around this time end up running counter two issues

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Speaker 1: that are emerging in society, things like civil rights feminism.

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Speaker 1: Because you have a genre, a narrative that is intensely

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Speaker 1: gendered in its appeal, but very misogynist and its subject matter.

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Speaker 1: But it also on top of this avoids any discussion

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Speaker 1: of race and multiculturalism. And in terms of what's meant

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Speaker 1: by misogynist subject matter, it's continually the pattern of placing

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Speaker 1: the woman as the victim and usually being drawn in

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Speaker 1: by these men's charms. And so some more feminist scholars

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Speaker 1: too will will look at true crime as being very misogynistic. Um,

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Speaker 1: but it's also a reflection of in a response to

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Speaker 1: arise in violent and seemingly random crime that starts to

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Speaker 1: escalate in the sixties and then throughout the seventies, eighties,

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Speaker 1: and nineties, there's this enormous anxiety in American culture about

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Speaker 1: a specific type of crime that was interpreted as an

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Speaker 1: indicator of a widespread and irreversible decline in the care, compassion,

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Speaker 1: and regard for others. It's like it's just as society

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Speaker 1: was becoming almost more distance from itself, this coldness set in,

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Speaker 1: and so we have the rise of terms like psychopath

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Speaker 1: and sociopath to indicate the monster that first emerged in

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Speaker 1: those earlier nineteenth century texts. Yeah, it becomes more clear

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Speaker 1: for readers to try to use that term, that mothering

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Speaker 1: term of a psychopath or sociopath to indicate, Okay, well

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Speaker 1: this is the scary person. They obviously are not normal.

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Speaker 1: They don't have a conscience, so they are bad. There's

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Speaker 1: more of a black and white distinction there. And simultaneously

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Speaker 1: you can see this evolution from true crime making sense

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Speaker 1: of things like the Manson killings. When you have these

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Speaker 1: books from me out in the seventies and then in

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Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties, it's as though true crime takes

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Speaker 1: on almost an educational tech. Whereas Jean Merley points out,

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Speaker 1: all of a sudden, these consumers of true crime books

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Speaker 1: are able to talk about details of forensics work, profiling,

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Speaker 1: and highly technical aspects of criminology. People can talk about

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Speaker 1: blood spatter patterns and things like that. Yeah, but I

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Speaker 1: mean that's where we get the terms crime porn. I

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Speaker 1: mean that that people talk about when they talk about

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Speaker 1: these kinds of shows, because you start getting it moves

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Speaker 1: from the serials and the books of the thirties and

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Speaker 1: forties and fifties into television shows featuring all of this stuff,

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Speaker 1: and it shows close ups of bruises and blood splatter,

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Speaker 1: and people, particularly women, just can't get enough. And and

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Speaker 1: part of it is like, we have this rise of

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Speaker 1: a celebrity culture, and so a lot of these sociopathic others,

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Speaker 1: you know, these killers become their own sort of crazy

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Speaker 1: celebrity figures. Oh yeah, I mean take Manson alone. It's

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Speaker 1: there are still people who are followers of Manson because

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Speaker 1: of the notoriety that he received, even in two thousand thirteen,

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Speaker 1: there are still people out there. And we're about to

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Speaker 1: delve into the appeal of true crime to women specifically,

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Speaker 1: but before we do, let's take a quick break. So clearly,

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Speaker 1: the enduring popularity of true crime and its expansion from

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Speaker 1: magazines to books to television really does pray a lot

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Speaker 1: on societal fears, maybe changes in the domestic sphere, all

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Speaker 1: of the different societal changes that have been going on

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Speaker 1: in the past fifty years. But what is it more

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Speaker 1: specifically about this appeal to women. I mean, we've talked

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Speaker 1: about ideas that maybe we like watching these shows because

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Speaker 1: there's catharsist, we like to see justice, we like to

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Speaker 1: feel more normal in our day to day by comparison

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Speaker 1: and um. But Laura Browder wrote a study called Dystopian Romance,

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Speaker 1: True Crime and the Female Reader, and what she did

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Speaker 1: for it was really just talked to a number of

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Speaker 1: true crime addicts, specifically true crime books, right, and she

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Speaker 1: found that, Uh, it boiled down to the fact that

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Speaker 1: many of these readers, from all different types of backgrounds,

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Speaker 1: they had, all different types of professions, typically read these

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Speaker 1: types of books to help themselves cope with this overarching patriarchal,

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Speaker 1: arical violence that they have encountered in the past and

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Speaker 1: that they fear still in the present. Because we talked

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Speaker 1: about how, you know, like the shows in particular, it

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Speaker 1: ties it up all nice and tidy and so you

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Speaker 1: feel you feel better and more reassured that everything's going

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Speaker 1: to be okay. Well, these women that she talked to

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Speaker 1: are using these books kind of in the same way,

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Speaker 1: reading about this terrible crime that happens, how it is solved,

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Speaker 1: but also trying to get out of it something along

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Speaker 1: the lines of what do I do in that situation?

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Speaker 1: They're actually kind of seeking answers from it. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: when you think about women's fear of violence, there is

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Speaker 1: a counterintuitive aspect to it, because research shows that we

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Speaker 1: fear becoming victims of violent crime more than men, even

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Speaker 1: though excluding things like rape and sexual assault, men are

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Speaker 1: more likely to be involved in violent crime. And on

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Speaker 1: top of that, study found that women are more turned

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Speaker 1: off by thoughts of gory experiences, which adds to me

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Speaker 1: another fascinating dimension to this true crime appeal, because in

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Speaker 1: a way, it's it's this direct violation of a taboo

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Speaker 1: because we're not supposed to, you know, be into violence.

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Speaker 1: We are turned off by Gore, We are afraid of Vince,

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Speaker 1: So why why would we why would we want to

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Speaker 1: confront it in such a way. And so, yeah, there's

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Speaker 1: this idea that it helps us get into the mind

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Speaker 1: of who our potential attackers might be, so that if

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Speaker 1: that happens in the real world, then we'll know how

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Speaker 1: to escape, right But she points out that, as you know,

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Speaker 1: reassured us that might make you feel as the reader,

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Speaker 1: you know, you still will never be able to get

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Speaker 1: into the minds of random crazy killers, because that's just

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Speaker 1: what they're gonna do. Random crazy killers are going to randomly,

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Speaker 1: crazily kill people, and there's not much that you know

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Speaker 1: you can do. It's like you're building a bomb shelter

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Speaker 1: underneath your house and filling it with spam, that kind

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Speaker 1: of thing. But nevertheless, because it's presented as true crime,

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Speaker 1: it is the reality of those situations happening that really

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Speaker 1: pulls a lot of women in. There was one woman

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Speaker 1: who told Browder, why would anyone read fiction when the

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Speaker 1: reality is so much more extreme? And she talks about

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Speaker 1: how true crime books usually will involve photographs of the

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Speaker 1: killer and the victim, and sometimes both of them together

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Speaker 1: if they had been a couple, for instance, and uh,

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Speaker 1: and there's also speaking of uh, you know, the man

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Speaker 1: killing the woman and if they had been a couple.

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Speaker 1: There is a lot of sex that gets tied up

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Speaker 1: with true crime as well, and for some readers, in

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Speaker 1: reading true crime, women vicariously experience kinky sex and violence

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Speaker 1: and survive. And that is also an appeal to some women. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's actually a really interesting point. And and she

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Speaker 1: does links. She links these books and this genre not

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Speaker 1: only to the taboo of looking at porn, but kind

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Speaker 1: of you know, where that romance novel that they picked

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Speaker 1: up at the drug store leaves off. So you know,

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Speaker 1: a lot of times this this true crime, these these

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Speaker 1: terrible crimes that are written about happen among families or

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Speaker 1: among couples, and so you know, she she has this

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Speaker 1: narrative of okay, well, see you read the romance novel

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Speaker 1: where the dominant man, you know, swoops in on his horse,

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Speaker 1: you know, five, comes in and he marries the princess

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Speaker 1: or whatever. But then what happens after the domineering man

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Speaker 1: comes in? What happens when Fabio turns out of the

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Speaker 1: head Bundy, right, exactly. Yeah, And she talks about how,

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Speaker 1: in contrast to romance novels that culminate in marriage, true

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Speaker 1: crime culminates in punishment. And that's the satisfaction gleaned of

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Speaker 1: seeing these men whom the female protagonists might have been

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Speaker 1: madly in love with, at some point, you know, we

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Speaker 1: see him brought to justice somehow, hopefully, right. Yeah, a

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Speaker 1: lot of the women she talked to, you said, they

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Speaker 1: stopped reading when he got sentenced or whatever. Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: don't care what happens. As long as he's behind bars,

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Speaker 1: then that's fine. And in addition to sexual politics that

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Speaker 1: are going on within these books, there obviously are, as

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Speaker 1: we have implied, plenty of gender politics to dissect as well.

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Speaker 1: For instance, Broughder notes how there was a boom in

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Speaker 1: true crime that paralleled the rise of the women's movement

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Speaker 1: in the seventies. Yeah, and then she focuses a lot

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Speaker 1: also on one true crime narrative in which the killer

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Speaker 1: was a woman, and not only was the killer a woman,

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Speaker 1: but she killed her children, so already that's two strikes

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Speaker 1: against gender norms. And she focuses a lot on people's

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Speaker 1: perceptions of that woman and how she was so much

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Speaker 1: less sympathetic because of the fact that she wasn't playing

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Speaker 1: gender right basically, and other scholars point out that, you know,

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Speaker 1: this style of book, the style of writing lets you

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Speaker 1: be kind of an armchair killer. So whoever the killer is,

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Speaker 1: particularly if it's female, like it lets us act out

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Speaker 1: or or imagine the things that we would never do

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Speaker 1: in reality. But here, in that particular case, for instance,

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Speaker 1: when the killer is a killer because she has killed

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Speaker 1: her children, all of a sudden, that is so much

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Speaker 1: less palatable to the reading audience. And that's one reason why,

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Speaker 1: perhaps in a more recent study that came out in

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Speaker 1: also looking at why women are drawn to true crime novels,

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Speaker 1: um women consider true crime books more appealing when the

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Speaker 1: victims are female, rather than if you are reading about

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Speaker 1: a female murderer or sociopath or psychopath, whatever kind of path. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of that goes back to what we

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Speaker 1: touched on as far as women being able to put

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Speaker 1: themselves in that vulnerable woman's position and gain tips. It's

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Speaker 1: like being able to try to keep an eye out

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Speaker 1: learning what you can, learning those fitness relevant tips to

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Speaker 1: keep your own self safe if you were ever to

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Speaker 1: happen to get in a situation like this. But at

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Speaker 1: the same time, there is something that scholars call the

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Speaker 1: fear victimization paradox, which is that mismatch of our elevated

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Speaker 1: ray of fear that something is terrible is going to

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Speaker 1: happen to us, that we are going to be assaulted, murdered, etcetera,

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Speaker 1: versus how men are far more likely to be the

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Speaker 1: victims of violent crime. But still at the same time,

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Speaker 1: some caution that the escalated true crime media saturated environment

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Speaker 1: that we are living in where if you turn on

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Speaker 1: the news, that's a lot of violent crime. If you

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Speaker 1: turn on you know, obviously Investigation Discovery, it's crime to

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Speaker 1: four seven. And then if you're also reading these books,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of everywhere that there's a problem with it,

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Speaker 1: almost turning it into fiction. There is a distancing effect

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Speaker 1: when when we look at the statistics, there are you know,

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Speaker 1: crimes that are happening specifically to women. And we also

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Speaker 1: to have to talk about the fact that a lot

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Speaker 1: of times, not just in true crime, but also in

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Speaker 1: news stories that we hear about with women as victims,

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Speaker 1: it's always white women. For the most part, it's white

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Speaker 1: middle class women, whereas crimes against women of color are

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Speaker 1: severely under reported. Yeah, I I those are all incredible points, because, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: when you're sitting there on your comfy couch with your

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Speaker 1: popcorn or whatever, and you're watching a show about some

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Speaker 1: grizzly murder, it is easy, especially if you're watching a

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Speaker 1: marathon of it. It is so easy to sink into

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Speaker 1: that feeling of like I'm safe, it's fine, you know,

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Speaker 1: this is this is just entertainment, and so it completely

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Speaker 1: distances us from actual statistics of sexual violence. Yeah, and specifically,

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Speaker 1: you know, one five women is raped nearly twice that

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Speaker 1: have experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking, and sexual assault

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Speaker 1: rates are higher for black women than white women, according

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Speaker 1: to the Office on Violent against Women in the National

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Speaker 1: Institute of Justice. Specifically, the rate of intimate partner violence

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Speaker 1: against black women is about twice that for white women,

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Speaker 1: with economic distress hugely proportionate to violence, and instead what

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Speaker 1: we hear from these shows are anecdotes and twisted lessons

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Speaker 1: about violence and crime, all starring white women, and the

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Speaker 1: attackers are depicted as strangers and don't worry because forensics

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Speaker 1: science will solve everything. But when you look at the

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Speaker 1: reality of these situations, that's just not the case. Typically

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Speaker 1: it is someone the attacker is someone the woman knows intimately,

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Speaker 1: whether it's a family member or a close friend, and

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Speaker 1: often those attackers are the attacks themselves are not reported,

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Speaker 1: and the attackers don't go to jail. Yeah, and this

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Speaker 1: is kind of a side note, but in Gertrude Stein

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Speaker 1: actually wrote about this for the New York Tribune in

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Speaker 1: an article called American Crimes and How they Matter, and

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Speaker 1: she said, there are only two kinds of time that

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Speaker 1: people care about. The crime hero and the crime mystery.

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Speaker 1: All the other crimes everybody forgets as soon as they

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Speaker 1: find out who did them. And if we fast forward

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Speaker 1: that too today, it really is almost that blown up

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Speaker 1: out of proportion, because it's almost as though our crimes

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Speaker 1: are becoming dehumanized and victims become characters, and everything is

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Speaker 1: so formulaic to the point to where it's always the

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Speaker 1: same cast of characters looking the same and in the

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Speaker 1: same socio economic class, where that's a very unrealistic snapshot

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Speaker 1: of what true crime is truly. Yeah, and I mean

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Speaker 1: it is. I don't want to take away anyone's television

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Speaker 1: or anything, but it is too bad that a lot

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Speaker 1: of the time shows like this, networks like this, Uh,

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Speaker 1: they attract so many eyeballs, and that means that eyeballs

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Speaker 1: are not going to your local news, They're not going

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Speaker 1: to your newspaper, so you're less aware almost and and

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Speaker 1: you know, maybe you're not. But I worry that maybe

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Speaker 1: people are less aware of the actual crime that's going

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Speaker 1: on in their own community, the stuff that they really

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Speaker 1: need to worry about, versus things that are more abstract.

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Speaker 1: And I do have to what we do have to

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Speaker 1: give props to Investigation Discovery for some self awareness of this,

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Speaker 1: because they do promote educational things in terms of teaching

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Speaker 1: women about crime, risk and safety and domestic violence. But

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Speaker 1: I do want to know from true crime fans out

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Speaker 1: there what the appeal is and whether or not it

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Speaker 1: makes you feel less safe, because for me, if I

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Speaker 1: want to watch a scary movie, it's gonna be something

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Speaker 1: along the lines of a zombie because I know that

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Speaker 1: that's not going to happen to me, and I can

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Speaker 1: deal with that. But stranger danger kind of things, that

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Speaker 1: sort of true crime if terrifies me because that's the

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Speaker 1: stuff that gets in my head. Oh no, there actually

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Speaker 1: could be someone out there who wants to do horrible

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Speaker 1: things to me. Yeah. So I'm not in the demographic

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Speaker 1: that the I'm not in that female audience of true

414
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Speaker 1: crime addiction. Me neither. I I I if I'm going

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Speaker 1: to watch something about crime, I would rather watch honestly,

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Speaker 1: like Law and Order SDU, which is already about horrific

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00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:36,800
Speaker 1: subject matter, but that is completely completely fake exactly. There's

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Speaker 1: that that distancing factor in there. But as was it.

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Speaker 1: Browder pointed out in her study, a lot of these

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Speaker 1: women who were the most drawn into true crime had

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Speaker 1: been victims of crime, right, And I could totally see

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Speaker 1: how watching it or reading it and reliving it in

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Speaker 1: that sense could be therapeutic and give you a sense

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Speaker 1: of control over it, trying to find answers as to

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Speaker 1: why it happens to other people. Yeah, and camaraderie for

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Speaker 1: victims who survive and are okay after that. So I

427
00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: mean it's it's a it's a highly nuanced drama. It's

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Speaker 1: not just violence and gore and that's it. There's a

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Speaker 1: lot of stuff tied up with it when you start

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Speaker 1: to unentangle all of these different social elements, gender politics,

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00:27:25,080 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 1: sexual politics, which is one thing that the two thousand

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00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:32,640
Speaker 1: ten study that got a lot of press um looking

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00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:35,880
Speaker 1: at why women are obsessed with true crime it got

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Speaker 1: some criticism because it completely neglected the sexual politics aspect.

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00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:43,640
Speaker 1: No one wants to say that, well, some women might

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00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:46,160
Speaker 1: like it in the same way that we like romance

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00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:51,680
Speaker 1: novels for the keenk here aspects of it too. So

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00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:54,399
Speaker 1: here's Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of taboos

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00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:58,639
Speaker 1: being violated in true crime books. Yeah, so this is

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00:27:58,680 --> 00:28:01,160
Speaker 1: where we want to hear from. You. Send us an

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00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:04,960
Speaker 1: email at mom Stuff at Discovery dot com, and we

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00:28:05,080 --> 00:28:08,240
Speaker 1: have some listener mail for you. But before we read it,

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00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:14,240
Speaker 1: we have a quick break. And now back to our letters. Si, Caroline,

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00:28:14,280 --> 00:28:17,480
Speaker 1: I have a letter here from a listener who would

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00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:20,640
Speaker 1: like to remain anonymous. So I am going to call

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00:28:20,760 --> 00:28:24,320
Speaker 1: this listener Bert. Birt is not his or her name.

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00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:30,040
Speaker 1: So Bert writes, Hello, female identified human persons, just listen

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00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:33,040
Speaker 1: to what's the difference between gender and SCTs and had

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00:28:33,080 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: a couple of things to share. When I first started

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00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 1: working in healthcare fifteen years ago, I encountered a baby

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00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:42,440
Speaker 1: born with ambiguous genitalia. I didn't really understand how this

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00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: could be unclear until I saw the quote unquote down

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00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:49,000
Speaker 1: below bits and it really was hard to call. This

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Speaker 1: baby was born to very traditional parents from another culture,

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00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 1: and they were very distraught. You mentioned picking names, but

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00:28:56,360 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 1: what about telling the rest of your family. Usually it's

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00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 1: a boy or it's a girl, is the first thing

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00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:04,680
Speaker 1: that happy dad shouts when he comes into the waiting room.

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00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:07,760
Speaker 1: But in these cases, what can you say. In this

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00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 1: particular case, there was a significant cultural pressure to produce

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00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:15,720
Speaker 1: a son or air, so this ambiguous quote unquote situation

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00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 1: was just about intolerable. The baby was a pre me

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00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:21,120
Speaker 1: and stated at the hospital for about a month, but

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00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 1: had very few visitors, including only rare visits for mom

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00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:26,720
Speaker 1: and dad. The last I heard was that they were

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00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:29,280
Speaker 1: waiting for a DNA test. But as you know, that

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00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:32,880
Speaker 1: still doesn't guarantee the child will want to identify himself

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00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:36,240
Speaker 1: herself as the sex that best matches the DNA. I

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00:29:36,320 --> 00:29:39,840
Speaker 1: pray the parents didn't feel pressured to perform assignment surgery

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00:29:39,880 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 1: too early, and that the child is now a healthy

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00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:49,080
Speaker 1: and happy team. So thanks Anonymous Burt for sharing that experience,

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00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:52,480
Speaker 1: and if you have experiences to share with us, you

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00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:54,960
Speaker 1: know where to email us. Mom Stuff Discovery dot com

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00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:56,840
Speaker 1: is where you can send your letters. You can also

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00:29:56,960 --> 00:29:59,280
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook and messages there, or follow us

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00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 1: on Twitter at and stuff podcast, and we are also

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Speaker 1: on Instagram. You're gonna want to check out all of

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00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:08,600
Speaker 1: our Halloween snaps we got. You can follow us at

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00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:12,680
Speaker 1: stuff mom Never Told You, and we have some hilarious

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00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:15,800
Speaker 1: Halloween videos to check out as well on our YouTube channel.

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00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:19,280
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00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 1: and don't forget to subscribe for more on this and

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Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Doesn't how Stuff Works dot com